SpaceX founder Elon Musk appeared on CNBC’s Closing Bell Tuesday and spoke about a broad range of issues, including the future of his rocket company. Musk didn’t furrow a whole lot of new ground here in regard to spaceflight, but he does go into some depth in his answers that I haven’t seen before. In any […] …

In 2009 President Obama asked Norm Augustine, and other luminaries such as the late astronaut Sally Ride, to review the state of NASA’s human spaceflight program. Five years ago, today, the commission held its first public meeting. Their final report came out in the fall of 2009 (see .pdf). The Augustine committee found that NASA’s existing program, Constellation, […] …

As I report in the second part of my Adrift series on America’s human spaceflight program, work is well underway on NASA’s first heavy lift rocket in four decades, the Space Launch System. Whatever you think about the $9 billion rocket, its development is running several months ahead of schedule and it now appears likely […] …

With NASA under the thumb of the Russian space program, Congress continues to play political games with the space agency. On Thursday the U.S. Senate’s Appropriations Committee unanimously approved the fiscal year 2015 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill. This means they agreed upon a spending plan to fund NASA, among other agencies. But […] …

The National Research Council released a new report today that reviews America’s human spaceflight goals and the direction of NASA’s programs. As I have been investigating many of these same themes for my Adrift series, I was eager to read the report. After doing so, and speaking with its lead authors former Indiana Gov. Mitch […] …